2006/04/30 by C. J. Clarke, J. E. Pringle · 70 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Biology #Genetics #Main sequence #Physics #Sequence (biology) #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2006.00177.x
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 370(1), L10-L13 (Oxford University Press) · accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2006/05/15 · openalex publication_date 2006/05/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract We examine the recent data and analysis of Natta et al. concerning the accretion rate on to young stars as a function of stellar mass, and conclude that the apparently steep dependence of accretion rate on mass is strongly driven by selection/detection thresholds. We argue that a convincing demonstration of a physical relationship between accretion and stellar mass requires further studies which, as is the case for Natta et al., include information on upper limits, and which quantify the possible incompleteness of the sample, at both low and high accretion rates. We point out that the distribution of detections in the (M, )-plane can in principle be used to test conventional accretion disc evolutionary models, and that higher sensitivity observations might be able to test the hypothesis of accelerated disc clearing at late times.